Music Notes November 2017

Greetings Music Parents!

This past month has been full of new and interesting things for the musicians at Honey Creek!

Concert and Informance:

They are really excited about showing you what they know at our Informance and Concert in December! The concert is scheduled for December 14th and will take place in the gym as we won’t all fit in the Cafetorium.

Google Classroom:

5th Grade and Middle School students are all signed up for Google Classroom, which is a web based class management program. All discussion, assignments, assessments, etc will be located on that website. Students need to sign in and check the classroom daily, as it will be frequently updated throughout the day. Parents will be notified by Google Classroom in the form of a digest of their assignments, which is emailed to you weekly. If you are not receiving these emails, please let me know.

New Website:

Everything you need to know to be successful in band is located on 2 places on the web. First is the Google Classroom page. Second is the new music webpage!

Here you will find everything from a fingering chart for the clarinet, singing parts for Music Lab, to a bucket drumming demo video. You can even watch the cool video stories your K-1 student might tell you about at the dinner table! With this new site up and running, I will be posting very limited information on the WordPress site, mostly just the Honey Bunches of Notes.

New Equipment:

In an effort to locate some more equipment for the Band (our percussion most specifically) I came in contact with Dan McCourt in Pontiac. Dan owns The Greenhorn Project, which takes in instruments from districts that are upgrading or dissolving, and sells them to other districts, either repaired or as is, for a huge mark down. So far I have purchased another xylophone and a floating bass drum concert band hoop. You will see both of these instruments in action in December. The next instruments I am saving up for are timpani.

Class by Class

K-1 – We are spending a lot of time this semester working on rhythms, playing new instruments, and using our voices to make music. We listened to some scary music by Edvard Greig called “In The Hall of The Mountain King” with a little animated sled rider that moved with the music. We are learning the rhythmic difference between a quarter note and an eighth note and how to count them.

2-3 – This month we focused a lot on rhythm and playing multiple parts. We also started to learn and sign solfege and play a cool new game called The Forbidden Word!

4-5 – We have been the busy over the last month learning a full piece on buckets for the concert, complete with stick tricks! We are also learning music and choreography to “Cold Snap” from the musical “Flakes”. We also have our sights set on after the winter break when we will be learning to play recorders and participating in an Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra program called “Link Up: The Orchestra Rocks!” in cooperation with Carnegie Hall. Information about recorders will be coming out in the next newsletter.

Firebird Band – We are working our way through the Standard of Excellence book with gusto! We are already on number 23! Students have weekly playing tests that are recorded and submitted through Google Classroom. If they are having problems logging in to Google Classroom, please let me know. There are videos on Google Classroom on how to record and submit a test. As stated above, parents should be getting weekly reminders about missing assignments in their email.

Phoenix Fire Band – We are tackling three pieces for the Winter Concert, In the Hall of the Mountain King, Dark Adventure, and The Funky Turtle. We are learning a lot about the next stage of being a musician, listening, blending and tuning our sound into one performance. Phoenix Fire does not have practice journals anymore, but rather have weekly playing test to be submitted through Google Classroom.

Music Lab – We are performing music in small and large ensembles on ukulele, learning a choir piece in Swahili, and performing a small ukulele choir finger picking piece for the December concert. There are helpful instructional guides, recorded sign and play along tracks, as well as sheer music on the Weebly site.